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In what sense, then, do we assert this Unity, and how is it to
be adjusted to our mental processes?
Its oneness must not be entitled to that of monad and point: for
these the mind abstracts extension and numerical quantity and
rests upon the very minutest possible, ending no doubt in the
partless but still in something that began as a partible and is
always lodged in something other than itself. The Unity was never
in any other and never belonged to the partible: nor is its
impartibility that of extreme minuteness; on the contrary it is
great beyond anything, great not in extension but in power,
sizeless by its very greatness as even its immediate sequents are
impartible not in mass but in might. We must therefore take the
Unity as infinite not in measureless extension or numerable
quantity but in fathomless depths of power.
Think of The One as Mind or as God, you think too meanly; use all
the resources of understanding to conceive this Unity and, again,
it is more authentically one than God, even though you reach for
God's unity beyond the unity the most perfect you can conceive.
For This is utterly a self-existent, with no concomitant
whatever. This self-sufficing is the essence of its unity.
Something there must be supremely adequate, autonomous,
all-transcending, most utterly without need.
Any manifold, anything beneath The Unity, is dependent; combined
from various constituents, its essential nature goes in need of
unity; but unity cannot need itself; it stands unity
accomplished. Again, a manifold depends upon all its factors; and
furthermore each of those factors in turn- as necessarily inbound
with the rest and not self-standing- sets up a similar need both
to its associates and to the total so constituted.
The sovranly self-sufficing principle will be Unity-Absolute, for
only in this Unity is there a nature above all need, whether
within itself or in regard to the rest of things. Unity seeks
nothing towards its being or its well-being or its safehold upon
existence; cause to all, how can it acquire its character outside
of itself or know any good outside? The good of its being can be
no borrowing: This is The Good. Nor has it station; it needs no
standing ground as if inadequate to its own sustaining; what
calls for such underpropping is the soulless, some material mass
that must be based or fall. This is base to all, cause of
universal existence and of ordered station. All that demands
place is in need; a First cannot go in need of its sequents: all
need is effort towards a first principle; the First, principle to
all, must be utterly without need. If the Unity be seeking, it
must inevitably be seeking to be something other than itself; it
is seeking its own destroyer. Whatever may be said to be in need
of a good is needing a preserver; nothing can be a good to The
Unity, therefore.
Neither can it have will to anything; it is a Beyond-Good, not
even to itself a good but to such beings only as may be of
quality to have part with it. Nor has it Intellection; that would
comport diversity: nor Movement; it is prior to Movement as to
Intellection.
To what could its Intellection be directed? To itself? But that
would imply a previous ignorance; it would be dependent upon that
Intellection in order to knowledge of itself; but it is the
self-sufficing. Yet this absence of self-knowing does not comport
ignorance; ignorance is of something outside- a knower ignorant
of a knowable- but in the Solitary there is neither knowing nor
anything unknown. Unity, self-present, it has no need of
self-intellection: indeed this "self-presence" were better left
out, the more surely to preserve the unity; we must eliminate all
knowing and all association, all intellection whether internal or
external. It is not to be though of as having but as being
Intellection; Intellection does not itself perform the
intellective act but is the cause of the act in something else,
and cause is not to be identified with caused: most assuredly the
cause of all is not a thing within that all.
This Principle is not, therefore, to be identified with the good
of which it is the source; it is good in the unique mode of being
The Good above all that is good.
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